


signals and noises

by plastiswafers



Category: Daredevil (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Human Disaster Matt Murdock, Humor, Matt and Tony do NOT get along, Tony Stark Does What He Wants, Witchcraft, until they do
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-24
Updated: 2016-04-24
Packaged: 2018-06-04 03:16:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6639061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plastiswafers/pseuds/plastiswafers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It would be a lot easier for everybody if Tony Stark and Matt Murdock would just get along, but Tony has never been interested in making anything easy, and Matt doesn't know the meaning of the word.</p>
            </blockquote>





	signals and noises

**Author's Note:**

> For this [prompt](http://daredevilkink.dreamwidth.org/4501.html?thread=8986517#cmt8986517).
> 
> Takes place post-AoU and s1 of Daredevil. Warning for some mild ableism from Tony, because who else?

The streets of Hell’s Kitchen are covered with an oozing, noxious sort of green mist, which Tony is honestly not entirely sure is out of the ordinary for the area—he doesn’t exactly make a point of hanging around in pre-gentrification locales. At the epicenter of the green mist is a towering young woman with eyes glowing the same color as the landscape, dark hair curling in tendrils down to her calves, and a gaudy amulet practically _pulsating_ on her chest.

Tony has a sneaking suspicion that Hell’s Kitchen hasn’t seen that one before.

“You aren’t the Avengers,” she sniffs, looking down at the Iron Man suit with all the hauteur of a disgruntled teenager.

Somewhere behind him, a streetlight explodes; it’s nearly four in the morning. Tony is beginning to feel extraordinarily put out by the entire situation.

“I’m _an_ Avenger,” Tony says. And he _is_ , or was, in a technical sort of way, if you ignore linear time and Tony’s grand proclamations to the contrary. “And practically the most important one, you know, I _do_ have the power of the purse, it’s like I’m the United States and the Avengers are the UN Security Council, except, you know, competent, and—wait, why the hell am I listening to you?”

Tony aims a propulsor square at her chest, but something’s not firing right; FRIDAY’s voice goes blank in his ear, and then there’s static loud enough to make him drop a knee and wince. The mist has gone corporeal now, and it’s climbing up the legs of the suit, and Tony thinks dimly that this is why the Avengers should be down here helping him instead of jacking each other off or whatever the hell it is that they’re doing in upstate New York.

“You are foolish, Tony Stark,” the woman declares. Her voice is getting simultaneously louder and weirder, like there are ten different people all speaking through one mouth. “Foolish, and arrogant, and simple-minded, and you will _rue_ the day that you crossed _me_ , the one and only—”

She’s cut off by a loud gurgle, and Tony abruptly finds himself capable of standing on his own. He moves to take aim once more, only to find that it’s completely unnecessary: someone has already beaten him to it, smashing the gem in the center of the amulet with what appears to be a billy club. The mist evaporates in less than a second; Tony’s tension headache, which he supposes he should more accurately reclassify as an _evil magic headache_ , disappears as well.

The woman evaporates along with the mist, leaving nothing but a man wearing red leather and literal fucking devil horns standing her wake.

Tony should probably feel something like gratitude, but he’s never exactly been one for normal human emotional responses.

“Are you wearing a gimp suit?” Tony says by way of greeting.

“You aren’t needed here,” the man says, low and calm. “Stay the hell out of Hell’s Kitchen.”

That’s rather rich, Tony thinks, and not to mention _rude_ —there’s no way Mr. Kinky Devil Man could’ve gotten the jump on her without Tony’s estimable distraction skills.

But it’s also four in the morning, and Tony is in Hell’s Kitchen of all places, and he just nearly got his ass kicked by a mall goth with an axe to grind. “You’re welcome,” Tony calls, boots blasting with just enough energy for him to start hovering away. “Glad to help, really.”

His words fall on deaf ears, or to be more accurate, no ears. The man is already gone.

  


* * *

  


Matt’s coffee tastes even more burnt than usual and he winces with every sip. He has Foggy to blame for that, but he also has himself: two hours of sleep is not exactly conducive to tamping down ridiculously overactive senses, and the law offices of Nelson & Murdock are amazingly good at unpleasant sensory overload.

“You look like shit,” Foggy says, sliding into the chair opposite Matt’s in their cramped little conference room.

“Offensive,” Matt says. “You know I can’t check to see if you’re right or just cruelly harassing me.”

“Bullshit,” Foggy says. “I bet the bags under your eyes are like, pulsing in Morse code at you and letting you know what the president is doing right as we speak. I’m pretty sure you can feel all the burst blood vessels in your eyes and they’re spelling out the mysteries of the universe. You, sir, are _entirely_ aware of just how shitty you look right now. I’m just giving you a friendly reminder.”

The depressing thing is that Foggy’s not half wrong. Matt chooses to change the subject.

“I met Tony Stark last night,” he says conversationally.

Across the table, Foggy’s heart rate picks up accordingly.

“No shit,” Foggy says. “Like, Tony Stark, or _Iron Man_? Are you joining the Avengers now? Gonna leave the practice to me and go fuck around in some tiny eastern European countries?”

“Iron Man,” Matt admits. “It was only for a minute.”

“Did you fight crime together?”

Matt remembers, not for the first time, why he didn’t want to tell Foggy about being the Daredevil.

“I fought crime,” Matt says. The woman, or whatever the hell she was—Matt’s mind keeps helpfully supplying the word “witch” but he’s not quite ready to bring that one into his wheelhouse—certainly constituted crime, if not the crime that the Daredevil was exactly used to stopping. “Stark fell on the ground and complained a lot.”

“I’m glad you’re so modest, buddy.” Matt can hear the grin stretching over Foggy’s face. “So what you’re telling me is that you basically saved Tony Stark’s life, and you’re some kind of extra super superhero now who doesn’t just save us common folk but the _heroes themselves_. Did he grovel? Did he offer you a bunch of money? Please tell me it’s the latter.”

Matt shrugs. “I told him to go away.” Foggy’s heart rate picks up again, and not in a good way. “He’s—he’s a pain in the ass, Foggy. He’s the epitome of more money than sense. Tony Stark is _not_ what the Daredevil stands for. He’s not what you and I stand for.”

Foggy leans back in his chair with an audible squeak that leaves Matt’s ears ringing. “Okay,” Foggy says. “While I appreciate your commitment to our mutual self-righteousness, I feel that it’s my duty as your friend to remind you that Tony Stark is the most powerful guy in, what, the entire country? The entire world? He’s definitely got one up on Putin.”

Foggy’s opportunist hat is one of Matt’s least favorite personas, one he doesn’t particularly care for on the best of days, and this is decidedly not one of Matt’s best days, or a better day, or even a good one. The side effect of this is that he doesn’t have the emotional energy to fight about it. “I don’t know,” Matt says thoughtfully. “If we’re talking raw power, I think Thor’s got the edge. Can’t he rain down thunder and lightning?”

Foggy snorts. “Yeah yeah, okay. That’s about as much of your comedic stylings as I can handle for one morning. Consider the subject dropped.” There’s a quiet clank as Foggy picks his own cup of coffee up from the table, then the sound of Foggy’s throat constricting and expanding as he swallows, and then a hacking gag.

“Okay, fuck this.” Foggy stands up. “I’m going to Starbucks. You want something, or will that offend your delicate anti-bourgeois sensibilities?”

Matt sighs; Starbucks may actually be worse at brewing than Foggy himself, but at least they’ve got added sugar, not to mention the added shots. He fishes a fiver out from somewhere deep in his pockets. “Venti mocha,” he says. “Quad shot. And not a word about this ever again.”

Matt hears a swish of air that sounds suspiciously like a mocking salute, then Foggy’s out the door.

  


* * *

  


Tony hates that stupid proverb that says that only boring people get bored, mostly because it’s the type of bullshit sentiment that people like to plaster on their Facebook pages in between fawning pictures of their ugly children and incoherently racist memes. But he’s a complex guy: he also hates it because Tony is constantly bored, achingly bored, the kind of bored that leads to jet packs and JARVIS and killer sentient robots that try to take over the known galaxy and/or the Internet, and Tony Stark is many things but he is not _boring_ —he’s got the magazine covers to prove it.

“Nobody’s stopping you from joining us for training,” Steve had pointed out, voice gravelly and exhausted, when Tony had called him at six that morning and demanded to be entertained. Which, true, if you’re _Steve Rogers_ , not Tony Stark, who not only so vociferously demanded a break from Avenging-with-a-capital-A that the known universe nearly got destroyed but made a vow to himself more than twenty years ago never to go north of Yonkers.

“I have responsibilities in the city,” Tony had said. “Things to do. Important things. I run a company, you know.”

“Pepper runs your company.”

“Okay, not fair, it’s still got my name on it—but you’re right! I have Pepper. That’s a huge obligation right there.”

“I’m sure she’d be delighted to hear you phrase it that way.”

“Shut up. Just tell me that everything’s going very badly. I need some schadenfreude to start my day.”

Everything was indeed going badly, if not _very_ badly; it was growing pains, apparently, the kind that any new team was likely to have right upon formation. Tony didn’t find that particularly comforting, and had told Steve so.

Steve had suddenly remembered very important plans he’d made with Sam and hung up the phone. Tony thinks that that was rather un-American. Imagine he’d been so cowardly with the Nazis?

Several hours later and Tony’s been fucking around in his workshop without a single moment of inspiration or even really productivity, just soldering and sawing and fucking around like a little kid banging on pots and pans. FRIDAY demurely informs him that he’s consumed about fifty grand of raw materials today; should she put out an order for more copper wire ahead of its scheduled delivery?

Tony picks up his phone and calls Pepper immediately.

The CEO’s office at Stark Industries is much more tastefully decorated under Pepper’s control than it had been at any point during Tony’s tenure. He takes special care not to spill his bibimbap all over her lovely muted grays; Pepper gives him that smile that almost pushes him right out of his bad mood.

“You were out late last night,” Pepper says, taking a sip of her Diet Coke and looking at Tony with a raised eyebrow. Pepper is well aware that Tony still has FRIDAY monitor police scanners for him, and that nine times out of ten he acts on the tips. The fact that she rarely says anything is what Tony classifies as a blessing beyond all human belief.

“There was a witch in Hell’s Kitchen,” Tony says. “Or at least I think she was a witch. She was acting very witchy, at any rate. But she’s gone now. Oh! And I met a masked vigilante wearing _devil horns_ , which, like, really?”

Pepper leans forward; she’s actually interested now, which Tony should find offensive but really just finds understandable. “You met the Devil of Hell’s Kitchen?”

It’s Tony’s turn to raise an eyebrow. “Is that a thing?”

“He’s only been all over the news for months, Tony, really, you’d think it’d be in your professional interest to keep up on this sort of thing.”

“I have too many professional interests to count, Pep. Fill me in.”

“Oh, I don’t know.” Pepper purses her lips. “He runs around and disrupts organized crime all over Hell’s Kitchen. I think he’s actually killed a few people and everything.”

“Really?”

“Well, supposedly. People also say he’s a ninja, so take that with a grain of salt. They’re calling him ‘Daredevil’ now.”

From what he remembers of last night, ninja doesn’t seem too far out of the realm of possibility. Tony’s interest is officially piqued.

He leans forward and kisses Pepper fully on the lips, not even taking a second to regret the errant flavor of pickled daikon he’s still got in his own mouth. “You,” he says, “are basically the smartest, most capable, most helpful person on the entire planet.”

“But you’ve gotta run?” Pepper says shrewdly.

“See you at home, babe.”

  


* * *

  


The thing about being the Daredevil is that for all the nights that Matt is sliced to pieces, beat up, or thrown into trash cans, there are at least ten more that test the limits of his patience. Most criminals are, simply put, no match for his skill set; most of his fights are over in less than ten minutes, with Matt left hardly the worse for wear. 

“Just like Buffy Summers,” Foggy says sagely. “She had to patrol _every night_ but most of the vampires barely even put up a fight. It’s what happens when you’re a fighter of evil.”

Buffy or no, it’s been two weeks since Matt saw the witch—woman—and Tony Stark in the flesh, and it’s not like he wishes it would happen _again_ or anything, but it would be kind of nice if not every single day and night of his life was a waste of time.

Matt quickly discovers that this is a sentiment he should regret.

It’s a typical morning, that is to say: Karen is tapping a pencil on her desk in an off-rhythm sort of way that makes Matt’s skin crawl; Foggy is ostensibly researching potential new clients but is blatantly fucking around on the Internet in lieu of anything actually valuable to do; Matt is in the other room nursing a spectacular headache and subversively icing a rib injury that just won’t seem to go away.

The door to the office opens. Foggy jumps, caught off guard. Karen gasps in a way that Matt thinks would be audible to anybody, not just him.

“Um…hello there,” he hears her say. “Can I…can I help you with something?”

It’s a man, albeit a small one. The fabric of his clothing is expensive, judging from the sound it makes when it rubs together, and Matt is fairly certain that the watch on his wrist costs more than anything Matt has ever owned in his entire measly existence.

The signs all point to one thing. Matt would really like it if they didn’t do that.

“Well, hello there,” Tony Stark says, and Matt is glad he’s behind a closed door where nobody can see his grimace. “You must be…Karen Page. Tony Stark. A pleasure to meet you.”

Karen’s already rapidly beating heartbeat kicks up another notch. Matt wants to go and intervene almost as much as he really, really does not want to go and intervene.

“You know my name?” Karen says breathlessly. Matt wishes he could blame her for being star struck.

“An office is only as efficient as its assistant. And you must be Foggy Nelson.”

“The one and only.” Matt would call this a stab in the back if he didn’t already know what that felt like.

“I’m actually looking for your third associate,” Stark says, and this would be Matt’s cue to jump out the window. “Matthew Murdock? We actually met the other day. I was hoping we could…finish up some business.”

“Oh?” Karen says. “You’d think he would’ve said something…” She trails off. “But he’s just over there in his office. You can go right in.”

The window is beginning to look even more enticing; Matt knows he can break his fall and maybe only fuck up his rib a little bit. He stands up.

The door opens. Stark walks in and shuts is neatly behind him.

“The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen,” Stark says, and it’s not approval in his voice. “I was hoping you would come with me.”

  


* * *

  


Matt Murdock is stupidly young and stupidly good looking and apparently just plain stupid, seeing as he’s (supposedly) blind and stops trying to make it look that way within five seconds of walking out onto the street.

“We’re going to Stark Industries?” Murdock asks, hands thrust deep into his suit pockets like a petulant teenager playing dress up in his dad’s clothes for the first time.

Tony snorts. “You wish.”

Steve and Natasha are waiting, extremely reluctantly, in a safe house in Queens. They’re extremely busy, Steve reminds him, over and over and over again, and _Clint_ is in charge of the new recruits while they’re away, which—okay, yeah, Tony understands the concern on that one. But hello, rogue vigilante over here? Rogue vigilante with apparent superpowers? Tony’s going to need a witness to this confrontation, or else he’s putting on the suit.

Murdock is silent for the entirety of the car ride, which must be intentional, because it drives Tony completely up the wall. Tony, being the gentleman that he is, does his best to return the favor.

“I hate to tell you this,” Tony says, “but secret identities are _so_ 2007\. You might remember, I kind of blew the lid off that whole thing way back when. Nobody bothers with that shit anymore. And it’s actually pretty important, you know. Stops people from doing things like, oh, I don’t know, murdering people in the streets in the name of justice? And then turning around and pretending to be nice little blind lawyers during the daytime. Funny how that works.”

Murdock grits his teeth, but doesn’t say anything.

Tony grits his teeth as well.

It goes about as well as that.

The safe house is dingy, one of Clint and Natasha’s old hideouts that even SHIELD never had access to, and it doesn’t look like the décor has been updated since at least the early nineties. Tony chooses to interpret this as a personal slight against him and encourages his mood to sour even further.

Steve is sitting on a fold-out plastic chair that’s about ten times too small for his body, which makes Tony snicker. Nat is poised and apparently ready to act, since Matt and Tony are barely through the door before she makes her move.

“Matt Murdock,” she says smoothly, holding out her hand for a handshake. “Natasha Romanoff. And my associate, Steve Rogers.” Steve stands dutifully.

“He’s ‘blind,’ Nat,” Tony says loudly, making conspicuous air quotes around the offending word. “He has no idea what you’re doing right now.”

Murdock shakes her hand. Tony feels mutinous.

“Captain America and the Black Widow,” Murdock says. “It’s…nice to meet you. But I can’t say I know what I’m doing here.”

“We know who you are,” Natasha says apologetically. _Don’t be sad about it,_ Tony says. _He’s bad. We’re mad at him._ “We’ve known more or less since the beginning, I’m afraid.”

This is news to Tony. Now it’s Steve’s turn to look apologetic.

Murdock’s entire body stiffens, like a cornered animal. Natasha holds up a hand. “The information is highly classified, I assure you. Once we verified that you _hadn’t_ actually been responsible for any deaths”—Steve shoots Tony a look which he studiously ignores—”we were more than happy to leave you alone to do your…thing. But Stark over here was just _so_ enamored with how you _saved his life_ and couldn’t bear to go another day without contact. So here we are.”

Tony is reminded of a particular incident of when he was nine years old and his nanny promised him an entire bowl of pudding if he finished his Swiss chard only to renege on said promise after Tony fulfilled his side of the bargain. Murdock is beginning to look a lot less like pudding and a lot more like a bowl filled to the brim with leafy greens.

Murdock is beginning to relax, inch by inch. “So what exactly is it that you want from me?”

Apparently this is Steve’s cue to jump in; it’s like they planned this without him and _everything_. “Just an open line of communication.” Steve has what looks like a phone in his hand—in fact, Tony _knows_ it’s a phone, because it’s one that he personally designed under much undo pressure to create a piece of Braille-enabled hardware for some supposedly blind Stark Industries employee. An employee that, come to think of it, came into existence much at the same time as the Daredevil.

They’ve been planning this. Utter and complete _bastards_.

“Use it as much or as little as you want,” Steve continues. “We’ve noticed that Hell’s Kitchen has been a bit of a hotspot as of late, and you’ve done a pretty good job of dealing with it. We don’t want to get in the way of that. We just want to help.”

Murdock takes the phone and considers for a long, long minute. Steve refuses to look Tony in the eye; Natasha stomps on his foot every time he starts to open his mouth to chime in. This is what happens, Tony decides, when you quit the team. They leave you in the _dust_.

“What’s the catch?” Murdock says with an air of resignation.

Natasha smirks. “Well, Stark here has kindly agreed to be your liaison,” she says. “You can come to him with anything and everything you might need—he’s got absolutely nothing going on right now, so you can rest assured that he’ll be right there whenever you need him. Some might consider that the biggest tradeoff humanly possible.”

Tony’s heart sinks into his stomach; for once in his life he can’t find the words to complain. Steve looks at him now, sheepish but seemingly unaware of the deep-seated nature of Tony’s rage.

Steve should live it up while he still can.


End file.
